I always liked to travel. I was lucky, I had traveler parents when I was a child. They gathered together with other family friends and spent long holidays, driving in different places through the country. Mine is very beautiful, and I was glad every time we left it, but really happy when we came back. The farthest we went those times, was Germany, the "democratic" one of the two. There were times when travel over national borders was restricted, controlled and directed mostly to the "friends" from the Soviet Bloc. My mother had some relatives living in Germany, both of them this time, but we were to meet almost all the guys in the DDR, the democratic one. The German in the family was my grandmother, she had relatives in all the German world and USA as well, but she never tried to find anyone on her own. By German World, I mean Austria and Switzerland added to Germany. Of the two sisters she kept close with, one was married somewhere in the north of the country, and the other one, went to Germany in 1940, along with her husband and kids. More kids were born there, they were the parents of my only cousins, the only relatives more or less closer in age to me. Because we saw each other so rarely, every two years or so, we weren't really that close, there was some challenge every time … [Read more...]